


you are my nomad

by silverhedges



Series: the zodiac signs as: drama [1]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Backstory, Caffeine Addiction, College, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 20:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18059090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhedges/pseuds/silverhedges
Summary: In which Cheadle is in med school and Mizaistom is sympathetic.





	you are my nomad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crownsandbirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/gifts).



He’s running late, so he jogs across the road even when the traffic light is red. Not something Mizaistom would have done under normal circumstances, but graduation and becoming a real adult has changed him in certain ways. He still isn’t used to running in a suit, it stretching awkwardly around his shoulders and thighs. He keeps on having to yank up his sleeve to check his watch. Being an adult means never having enough time.

The university campus is strange as he passes through. The brick-and-mortar buildings are the same but all the students have unfamiliar faces. It’s a little like coming home and finding strangers living in your house.

But Mizaistom has too much on his plate to be too worried about that. Legal cases, his progression as a trainee, his relationships with his boss and his peers, the question of where the hell his career is going anyway and most importantly – he checks his bag and yes, the chocolate is still there.

The little café is still the same. Tucked away down a street beside an indie bookstore and a music shop, the stink of weed in the air, bracketed little windows with imported curtain designs. The doorbell rings as he opens the door. His heart is in his mouth as he looks around – the tables and chairs are cramped and miniature and if there isn’t space they’ll have to wait a long time and it just won’t be right if they don’t meet here. But no worries: there’s his girl, waiting at a table, already having saved a space for him.

Cheadle is staring into the void with a thousand-yard stare, her green hair tied up and her white gloves smeared with ink. Knowing her, she’s left her books at the library to mark her spot. Then she spots him and her face brightens up. She waves him over. Mizaistom steers himself around the other tiny tables and crams himself into the one she’s picked out for them. No worries. This is familiar in the face of so much unfamiliarity.

“I can’t do this,” Cheadle greets him.

“You can,” Mizaistom retorts.

“Nope.”

“Yes.”

“Can’t make me.”

“Only you can make yourself do it. And you can.”

She shakes her head, emphatic. Dark circles line her eyes. “I can’t, Mizai,” she says. “I really can’t. I thought – I thought I could. I thought I was strong enough to take it. I passed law school! We passed law school! But the bodies, the stink, the despair – it’s just too much.”

A lull for a moment as Cheadle sighs and smooths back her hair, traces of ink ending up on her forehead.

Mizaistom waits and then asks, “Then who’s going to go out and cure all the diseases in the world, if you give up?”

Cheadle smiles at him, a little weak but still there. “No one. Because everyone else has even less of an idea of what they’re doing.”

“That’s the Cheadle I know.”

They grin at each other. Maybe their friendship isn’t like other friendships. Friendships are supposed to be casual. For Mizaistom and Cheadle, they are each other’s top priority.

They order their usual: Earl Grey for Cheadle, expresso for Mizaistom, a blueberry muffin to split between them.

“It’s just harder without you there,” Cheadle admits. “It’s strange not seeing you all the time. Look at that suit! You look like a real adult, while I’m stuck here studying. Maybe I didn’t make the right choice. Being a full-time lawyer wouldn’t be so bad, even if I want to be a doctor too.”

“Trust me, you want to push away the real world for a while longer. It’s tough. Besides, there’s no cheat-sheets to becoming a doctor. They can’t invent machines to do it all either.” Mizaistom stirs his coffee. “Someone has to do it and it has to be you.”

Cheadle shakes her head, sighs and then changes the subject: “How has your traineeship been going?”

Mizaistom groans. “Applying the law in practice is much harder than doing it in theory.”

“Hey, I passed the Bar Exam….!”

“Well, this is nothing like the Bar Exam.” Mizaistom gives her a pointed look over the rim of his coffee cup.

Cheadle dunks a chunk of blueberry muffin into her Earl Grey tea and then eats it as if doing that is normal. Mizaistom doesn’t even blink. “What’s eating you up today? We’ve talked enough about my problems.”

“Awful horrific cases, awful horrific boss. It’s the same anywhere isn’t it?” Mizaistom shrugs, casting another look at his watch. That’s one of the negatives about graduating: before he would have had the choice of whether or not to waste a few hours having coffee with his best friend. Now under the rule of tyrannical capitalism, he is forced to be back at his desk by the end of lunch break.

“We need to get out of this city.”

“Once you’ve finished your medical degree.”

Cheadle laughs. “Oh, remember our graduation?”

“It was only last year, of course I remember it.” Mizaistom frowns. “What about it?”

Cheadle stirs her tea, the resting leaves at the bottom turning the water darker and darker. Maybe once she’s drank it they can read both their fortunes. If they weren’t so sensible as to not believe in those sort of things. “Wasn’t it nice? The sun was shining and we were all dressed up and even though we were sitting in alphabetical order we texted each other through the whole thing. The photos were lovely too.”

“Mine are on my apartment mantelpiece.”

“I know,” Cheadle says and laughs lightly. She holds out her hand. “Can I hold your hand?”

“Sure,” Mizaistom says and takes her hand in his. He knows he’s weird when it comes to touching other people, when it comes to seeing their skin bared. There is something wrong and uncomfortable inside him when people are naked just for him. It reminds of the days that he no longer acknowledges existed. The past is a foreign country. It happened to another person.

Anyway, Cheadle always wears gloves and is covered from head to toe and he is safe with her.

“Remember the first time we came here?” Mizaistom says.

“You just wanted to go to the bookstore but I was dying for a cup of tea.”

“Did I ever actually get to go to the bookstore?”

“Oh come on, you’d just have ended up buying the same copies of all the law books you’ve bought before.”

As they sit there in their little café, the world around them almost disappears. Who cares about what the people around them in the little café think of them? Are there even other people there? Does it matter at all if there are? Or maybe the only thing that matters is that they are there by each other’s side.

“Oh!” Mizaistom breaks the hand-hold to reach for his bag. “Here, I have something to cheer you up.”

Cheadle tilts her head like a puppy. “What is it?”

Out of the bag, Mizaistom brings a bar of dark chocolate with little crispy chunks that pop like fireworks in your mouth.                                                                                                                                  

 “Oh, Mizai, you didn’t!”

“Yes, I did.”

Cheadle holds out her hands and Mizaistom passes the chocolate bar to her. “Thank you. This is just what I needed after hearing about that awful boy.”

Mizaistom frowns. “What awful boy?”

Cheadle bites into the chocolate. It makes a satisfying popping noise. “This new exchange student. I remember the name vividly: Pariston Hill. I haven’t actually met him, but I’ve heard about him. He’s barely seventeen and a genius and it is so annoying.”

“Ouch.” A thought occurs to Mizaistom. “What on earth is he doing here? If he’s an exchange student and a genius, surely he would have chosen to go… anywhere else but here. Swardini City, for example.”

“I don’t know.” Cheadle swallows fireworks. “The rumours say all he wants is to mess with people.”

Just then, the doorbell rings. It isn’t that familiar jingle that attracts the duo’s attention. It’s the light catching on the raindrops in the newcomer’s blond hair. It almost makes him look like he is sparkling. He’s wearing a suit but his face is too smooth and young to be out of university. He has deep and gorgeous brown eyes.

The pretty newcomer wipes the rain from his forehead and looks up to catch their eyes. For some reason, neither of them obey the instinct to look away. This newcomer smiles at them and it is only the assembly of a smile with none of the emotion. It is instinctively off, like seeing blue grass.

The newcomer sits down at a table.

Mizaistom and Cheadle look at each other.

“I wonder who that is,” Mizaistom murmurs to her.

“No idea,” she whispers back.

“Shall we go?”

“Yes,” she says with heavy relief.

As they grab their coats and stand up to go pay, a voice calls out to them from where the newcomer is sitting. “Oh, you wouldn’t happen to be Cheadle Yorkshire, would you? I’ve heard a lot about you, I think I recognise your description…”

The rest of that story doesn’t need to be told here. But it was set in stone from the moment they met, some chemical mix of hatred and love that entangled them in dangerous ways for a long, long time after that. Maybe the three of them couldn’t be held together just by themselves – maybe they were waiting for a fourth to come inspire them, to set them on fire, to be their red thread.

**Author's Note:**

> For Jean.
> 
> Happy one month anniversary, sweetheart.
> 
> Title from the Long and the Short of it by Richard Siken.


End file.
